Everything Begins In Childhood

Chapter 19. The Residents of Our Building Gossip, Laugh and Cry

The bench near our entrance was the setting for a kind of court that was continuously in session, where any gossip might turn into a long-running hearing.

But today, as I approached the entrance, I noticed something unusual – there were more than the customary number of adults there. None of them were sitting on the bench. Instead, they were all standing and whispering, and they all looked sad. Sasha Kulikov came out of the building.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said, seeing that I was observing the gathering with surprise. “Haven’t you heard… that Ilyas drowned?”

“Ilyas… today… no, not today. I didn’t see him at school today… I didn’t see him in the yard either.”

Ilyas lived on the fourth floor of our wing of the building. He was a fifth grader. We kids respected him very much, and not just because he was older. All the boys respected Ilyas. Hardly anyone could compete with him when he played soccer in the yard. He was skilled, fast, and frisky. He never bragged about his achievements. He never bragged about anything, and he was very fair, for which he was especially admired. He would halt arguments, even fights, and, on top of that, he would reconcile the boys so that they didn’t ruin a friendship just to nurse a grudge.

Ilyas… How did it happen?

Sasha had heard that Ilyas and his friend Petya supposedly went for a walk by the canal. Ilyas slipped and fell on the concrete edge. He must have been knocked out, slid from the edge into the water and never resurfaced.

We moved closer to listen to what the adults were saying.

The accident had happened the day before, Sunday, in the afternoon. Ilyas’s parents grew anxious when their son didn’t return home by late evening. And his friend – what a pathetic coward he was – was scared and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Only when Ilyas’s parents called him and began to ask him questions did he break down and tell them the truth. He said he had hoped that Ilyas was playing a joke on him, that he had gotten out of the canal downstream and run home, but he was afraid to find out. Sasha and I were indignant – what a coward he was! What a scoundrel! Ilyas would never have done anything like that!

We discussed the tragic event for some time.

There was always something happening that would attract the attention of everyone in the large apartment building. Our entrance, like the whole building, the whole micro-district, like any other community, called a mahalla in Uzbek, lived from one event to another. The number of people drawn into the whirlwind of an event depended on one thing – the scale of what had happened. Heavy drinking and the escapades of drunkards were basically local events. There were so many drunkards, and their behavior, with rare exceptions, was so predictable and boring that they barely aroused any interest. At least one drunk would inevitably catch one’s eye every day – on a bus, at a movie theater, on a bench near a building entrance, under a bench, or in a dry arik that seemed a particularly cozy place to catch up on one’s sleep.

“Vasilyich drank himself into a fog again,” a woman informed her neighbors. “He thrashed poor Veronica again.”

“She’s such a foolish thing. She should have called the police long ago. He hasn’t been to the sobering-up station for a long time.”

In fact, there was nothing more they could add to that conversation for it had all been discussed more than once.

Scandals and fights – much more exciting events – attracted the attention of the entire building. They happened quite often and invariably evoked interest. The news would spread immediately and be the topic of heated discussion near every entrance.

“Ester! Shura!” Fat Dora waved her hand urging my mama and her factory friend to join her. “Have you heard about it? You mean you haven’t heard?” and she would inform them, accompanied by the whirring of her coffee grinder. “Vova Oparin broke Vasilyev’s window. It was such an awful fight!… No, between the fathers! They bloodied each other’s faces!”

It was worth watching Dora when she reported an incident. Her pupils, magnified by the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, would widen to supernatural size. Her eyes seemed about to pop out of their sockets and run to the scene of the fight. She would forget to blink; it almost seemed as if she would forget to breathe. Her big body seemed to inflate like an oxygen pillow. She didn’t want to waste precious time inhaling and exhaling but instead used it to speak non-stop.

Someone’s death was a much more significant event that brought together the residents of neighboring buildings and the whole mahalla.

Funerals took place quite often in the Yubileiny settlement. They always ended up with a procession on the street that was sometimes silent, other times resounding with the wails of women mourning the loss of the deceased. No matter how sad it was in itself, for us boys, a funeral was an important diversion – a lot to see and hear. And, in general, where else, apart from parades, could you see such a gathering of people?

It was strange that the death of Bogeyman, a person who had perhaps less claim to respect than anyone else in the mahalla, was the cause of the deepest sorrow, mixed with remorse, that my friends and I experienced.

Bogeyman – his nickname was uttered much more often than his name, Anatoly – had been a man of about forty-five who lived in one of the buildings nearby. He was a degenerate drunk whom we hardly ever saw sober. It was true that, unlike other drunks, Bogeyman didn’t run wild and didn’t curse. He used to zigzag unsteadily down our street, and when he had no more energy to walk, he would lie down on one of the benches near our entrance and take a peaceful nap. With his cheek on his hands and his knees bent, he would snore softly as if in a comfortable bed.

Perhaps, no one would have bothered him, but… he gave off an appalling stench.

“Hey, Bogeyman, get out of here!” enraged tenants, tired of his odor, would shout from their verandas. “Hey, Bogeyman, get lost!”

“A cannon ball wouldn’t wake him up!” someone echoed from another veranda.

“He’s quarreled with his wife again!” Dora would add. She always had the latest news.

“Anyone would drink living with such a bitch; even a dog wouldn’t want to live with her,” was another neighbor’s brief yet accurate opinion about Bogeyman’s wife Marya, as loud as the whole bazaar. “Leave the poor thing to his nap, we can put up with it.”

The “hero of the occasion” would smile in his dreams and sniffle peacefully as he lay on the bench. Perhaps, among his sleepy drunken thoughts was the following one: “I have wonderful understanding neighbors who pity me, an unfortunate man.”

Alas, Uncle Anatoly – that’s how we sometimes called him – would forget that “understanding” neighbors had children who were not at all wonderful or understanding. On the contrary, they were capable of carrying out cruel and unpredictable pranks.

That was what happened once when Bogeyman was unfortunate enough to fall asleep on the bench near the entrance of the building where the Oparins lived. Around that time, the Oparin brothers walked out of their building as a group of kids, including Rustem and me, were passing by. Naturally, we all surrounded the bench on which Bogeyman was snoring softly. After all, he was something to look at, if we could ignore the stench.

“He couldn’t find a better place to stink?” Gennady asked angrily. He never missed a chance to demonstrate his valor and other qualities of a future officer. “Just you wait, you’ll be hopping around soon. Guys, let’s make a ‘bicycle’ for him. Who has paper? Run! Get some paper!” he commanded, pulling some matches out of his pocket.

His younger brother was gentler and more compassionate, either because of his age or his disposition. He tried to prevent the inevitable.

“Hey, get up! Please, get up!” he pleaded in his thin voice, shaking the unfortunate drunk and pulling at his sleeve.

“Get out of here, what are you? The Red Cross?” Gennady pushed his little brother away. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for this piece of rotten carrion…” and he quickly got down to business, with all the experience he had.

After checking whether anyone could see him through the windows or from the street, Gennady took Bogeyman’s shoes off. Naturally, he wasn’t wearing socks. His dirty, swollen toes were exposed. One of the boys tore the newspaper into long strips and twisted them into braids. Gennady inserted the braids between Boogeyman’s stained toes. Now, the soles of his feet looked like two tattered brooms made of twigs. A match was struck, and the brooms turned into candles with little purplish crowns of flame, pale in the daylight.

I watched what happened next from the entrance hall of our building where we were hiding. I had retired there before anyone else, for I hadn’t the heart to stay through to the end. Poor Bogeyman woke up from the pain and rolled off the bench with a moan… Now he’ll run, we thought, watching him in horror and excitement, through the crack. He would run and, since he was half awake, he wouldn’t understand what had happened to him and why his toes were on fire. His feet would look like the violently spinning wheels of a bicycle with burning spokes, since he would be running in a state of panic. That was why the boys called this operation “bicycle.”

Yes, we had practiced the operation, and we are very ashamed to admit it, on unfortunate cats. But Bogeyman was more quick-witted than the cats. He bent over and pulled the burning “bicycle spokes” from between his toes, shook his burned fingers and, after looking around, stared at the entrance. His fiery red cheeks and crimson nose, along with his wide red eyes, were such a scary sight that we couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Take off!” tall Gennady was the first to yell, and we dashed out of the entrance with the speed of a bullet. We heard “Take off!” after we had already done so, for fear is a great motivator. It can turn a lame person into a sprinter.

I was running toward the garbage bins. I wasn’t running, I was flying. I could hear his tramping and heavy breathing behind me… He could catch up with me… So what if I hadn’t taken part in the evil prank but had only watched and giggled? He didn’t know that.

“I’ll never do it again… I won’t…” I repeated to myself, since I felt just as guilty as Gennady Oparin.

That was how I made it to the garbage bins. I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. What I heard must have been my own stomping and heavy breathing.

My heart was pounding so hard that it echoed in my ears. My cheeks were on fire. My face, hair and back were drenched in sweat. Before I had time to catch my breath, I heard heavy running again. Now it was Rustem running to the garbage bins with Bogeyman chasing him. He ran, stomping his feet heavily. He ran fast with no zigzagging, as if he weren’t drunk. Everything now was exactly as when I had imagined I was running from him.

I darted behind the garbage bins. I could see Rustem dashing to the left near the arik. Bogeyman turned too. Then Rustem, without stopping, jumped over the arik, but Uncle Anatoly, running at top speed, plopped into the water.

I groaned. The arik was narrow… Heavy Bogeyman must have hurt himself… but he didn’t. Here he was, wet all over, climbing out of the arik.

To continue chasing Rustem was out of the question. We felt it was inappropriate to laugh. We felt as if we had been doused with water too.

What a strange feeling remorse is. With adults it sometimes works in time to prevent some not quite honest action. A kind of momentary analysis takes place when all pros and cons are pondered. It’s quite different with children, as far as I know. Conscience and remorse begin to torment them after something happens.

That was what happened to us.

The soaking wet Bogeyman stood by the arik looking around. Then he trudged along home.

We also went home without saying a word to each other. We all, even Gennady Oparin, were ill at ease.

That very Bogeyman, or rather Uncle Anatoly, passed away suddenly. It happened approximately a year after we played that cruel prank on him. We would certainly come across Bogeyman from time to time after that, but we tried to avoid him. Then I heard that he had passed away… How – I didn’t know. The circumstances of his death were the subject of heated discussion among residents of our building and the neighboring ones.

Uncle Anatoly was Russian, and Russians, as everyone knows, have the most pompous funerals: music, flowers, and all that, not like the Tatars or the Jews, for example, who wrap a body in a cloth and carry it quietly to the cemetery… For us boys, and probably for the adults too, it was much more interesting to participate in a Russian burial ceremony.

We were looking forward to Uncle Anatoly’s funeral with excitement mixed with no small measure of fear. A person who has passed away is alive in your memory, provided you knew the person. At the same time, a frozen face in a coffin and a terrible, nagging sensation somewhere between your chest and stomach remind you – that’s not him lying there, he’s gone… How is it possible to comprehend that terrible enigma?

The funeral wasn’t held in the morning, but rather in the afternoon, after the end of the school day. It was a sunny autumn day. Our whole group, talking very animatedly, set out for the building where Uncle Anatoly had lived. It wasn’t far, just a fifteen-minute walk. We passed the corner of our building where we had harassed Bogeyman. Here was the arik, the garbage bins… We shouldn’t have done it. There had never been a more harmless alcoholic than he… We looked at each other and grew silent, but not for long because the subject of the conversation was very interesting: what had caused Uncle Anatoly’s death?

“Some people say he poisoned himself with vinegar,” Zhenya Andreyev, my classmate and friend, presented one possibility.

“Deliberately…”

“Stop lying, you’ve gone too far!” Oleg was outraged. “Not deliberately, he simply didn’t have any cash to buy vodka.”

“Oh no,” Vitya Smirnov interrupted. “Bogeyman poisoned himself deliberately, in other words, in-ten-tio-nal-ly… because of his wife. You can be sure of that. It was all because of her. Just imagine drinking that filth…” At this point, Vitya stopped speaking and winced as he imagined himself drinking vinegar. “As you drink it, it burns into you, a living creature, but you continue drinking and telling yourself, ‘I’ll prove to her who I am! I will!’”

We grew silent vividly imagining the horrible scene of Bogeyman’s death. We envisioned him in a new heroic light.

Drawn into this heated discussion, we didn’t notice that we had arrived at our destination. Uncle Anatoly’s building was indistinguishable from ours. An open space spread behind it. Hills could be seen in the distance. Local boys had one advantage – there was a shooting gallery nearby. It was not a portable one in a van but a real military shooting gallery, a very big one, the size of half a soccer field, sunk five meters into the ground. Even we could hear the sounds of shots when members of tank crews practiced shooting their handguns, and the boys from that building sometimes managed to see shooting with their own eyes.

A big crowd, bright with women’s head scarfs, had already gathered at the entrance by the time we arrived. They were expected to bring out the coffin at any moment.

Someone was heard weeping near the entrance. A plump woman clad in a dark dress, her hair hanging down and her tear-stained face swollen, sat on the bench. She rocked from side to side and exclaimed now and then, “You’ve abandoned me, my dear, and I’m all alone.”

Obviously, she was that very Marya, Uncle Anatoly’s wife. We boys had no sympathy for her. We decided that she looked like Baba Yaga (the Wicked Witch). If she had lost some weight, she would have looked exactly like Baba Yaga, disheveled and disgusting; all she needed was a broom to fly on.

Women were fussing around Marya, holding her by the shoulders, trying to console her, but her weeping and cries continued, “Oh-oh-oh, how shall I live alone?”

Zhenya Andreyev shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh yes, now she won’t have anyone to yell at.”

“She’s ruined such a man,” we nodded, utterly ennobling Bogeyman in our imagination, though Rustem suddenly remembered Uncle Anatoly’s insignificant shortcoming and whispered frighteningly to us, “Hey, guys, how will they bury him? He… stinks so terribly.”

We looked at each other, imagining that when they carried out the coffin, the familiar smell, the one we all knew, would fill the air.

“Well, they normally bathe the body,” Zhenya remembered. “Perhaps, it’ll turn out all right.”

Meanwhile, a great many people had gathered at the entrance. Boys, particularly those who, like us, had come without their parents, scurried through the crowd. No one paid attention to them for everybody was occupied in their grippingly interesting conversations. The words “vinegar,” “poisoned,” “while drunk” were frequently heard. Spiritual nourishment, to be further savored and digested, was being cooked up in the crowd. The residents of our mahalla would have a good reason to live tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, even a week later. People would ponder this subject on benches, in pavilions, while playing dominos, at bus stops. Uncle Anatoly’s death would be discussed and embroidered with details and fabrications, turning into a legend, almost a myth.

A wide panorama opened beneath the branches of the oak tree my friends and I had prudently managed to climb. We could observe the sea of swaying heads, bright head scarfs, caps, bald heads, skull caps, boys’ forelocks, girls’ braids. The muffled buzzing of voices now and then drowned out Marya’s lamentations by the entrance.

“They’re bringing him out!” Gennady Oparin shouted.

The crowd froze. The coffin cover was carried out of the building, and, almost immediately after, an open coffin with Uncle Anatoly’s body in it floated out on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was placed on stools.

The shouting became louder. Now, it was not just Marya lamenting. For some reason, all the women joined her cries. Marya rushed to the coffin to hug her husband. She was followed by one woman, then another, and a third. They were all weeping right into the dead man’s ears. We exchanged glances. Did they all love Uncle Anatoly so much? And where had they been before, when he had been drunk and lying on benches?

At last, the women stepped away from the coffin. Someone pulled the wailing Marya away. The men lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it from the entrance. The crowd swayed, lined up and followed. Now came the procession. It moved slowly down the middle of the street. As it pulled even with our tree, we bent down and, motionless on the branches, stared at the coffin, not taking our eyes from it. Here it was, right below us… Who would now call him Bogeyman? He looked so smart in his white shirt and black suit. His light hair, no longer disheveled and stuck together, but neatly combed to the side, gleamed in the sunlight. His well-shaven face was frozen into a meek smile… as if he had done everything himself – bathed, shaved, combed his hair, changed his clothes and then looked at himself in the mirror and, satisfied with his new appearance, lay down quietly and died.

After the coffin passed, we tumbled down from the tree and rushed forward, overtaking the crowd. We knew that the funeral would be accompanied by music on the main street, Yubileynaya. Here were the musicians! They were waiting, and as soon as the front of the procession drew even with them, funeral marching music rang out.

That was the moment we were especially looking forward to.

Both sides of the street were crowded with people. People were looking out of windows, doors and balconies. It was as if someone very important, a government official, was being buried. It was amazing how fast people came running to the sounds of the band, like soldiers to the sound of a bugle. They looked at the band, the coffin, the crying relatives, at the whole procession and, consequently, at me, for I, in order to draw attention to myself, walked like a close relative, with my head bent low, as if stricken with grief, but my eyes darted to the left and right in order not to miss anything.

That was how I walked, slowly, taking small steps, along with the whole crowd. It felt like a huge caterpillar crawling along, and the coffin with the dead body was its head. It was a colorful head, decorated with flowers. Wreaths on the sides of the coffin were the multicolored eyes of the caterpillar. The crowd, swaying slightly to the sounds of the music, was its body.

Ba-boom, ba-ba-ba-boom! The drummer beat the rhythm. The drum was so big that he carried it attached to very wide straps, wider than those on a school backpack. And he carried it not with its top up, like a normal drum, but with its top and bottom facing sideways, so he had two surfaces for drumming. Watching the drummer from afar, one saw a man with a huge belly, and his belly must have been so stuffed that it was difficult for him to walk. So, he was pounding on his belly with drumsticks to beat it down.

It wasn’t just the drummer but all the musicians, playing from the heart, assuming that the louder they played the better. Here, for example, was a man with a pair of cymbals. They crashed so loudly that one would jump every time he struck them together. No way a blacksmith with his hammer and anvil would be heard here.

Then there was the violinist. He wriggled as he dragged his bow over the strings for all he was worth. Sweat was rolling thick and fast down his face, the sound of his violin piercing and mournful. Women who walked close to him wailed to match the violin’s tone.

In a word, we boys were ecstatic about the band. It was the accordionist who didn’t win our approval. He didn’t show enough diligence. He didn’t seem to realize that he was playing at a funeral… Heavy, serious, mustachioed, he was squeezing the bellows of his accordion effortlessly, as if they were opening and closing all by themselves. His face remained absolutely impassive and motionless, so we decided that he was a bad musician. One had to play with feeling and sadness at a funeral.

Suddenly, the procession stopped. Was it really over? Yes, it was. A small truck could be seen at the intersection, its sides lowered, its bed covered with carpets.

It was this truck onto which the coffin bearing Uncle Anatoly’s body was placed. The band stopped playing, the crowd split into groups and began to disperse. The truck and a few cars carrying relatives and friends drove off to the cemetery.

We, in turn, set out for home. It was a long walk, but the impressions we had would be enough for a long walk.

Ilyas’s funeral was quite different, and we didn’t feel the same about it as about Uncle Anatoly’s. Perhaps, it was due to the fact that the feelings we had for Ilyas were more full-fledged and humane. Whether it was that or something else, every time a conversation about the upcoming funeral started, we felt sad. We were sorry for Ilyas. And still we were going to attend his funeral, overwhelmed by that very unquenchable childish curiosity we couldn’t conceal. Ilyas didn’t just die, he drowned. Poor Ilyas was found a week after he had fallen into the arik. His body floated to the surface further downstream, by the fence of the reservoir near the hydroelectric station. We went to his place right away to bid him farewell, not on the day of the funeral but a day before.

To allay our fears, we showed up at his place in a large group – Kolya, Sasha, their sister Lena, Edem, Rustem, Vova Oparin and I. One of the adults took us to the bedroom. Our friend lay on the mattress, covered by a spread up to his waist. His head rested on a snow-white pillow, against which his face stood out distinctly. We squatted near the mattress in silence, trying to keep our eyes off the swollen blue-and-white bubble on which his slanted eyes were not visible, where his nose had slid down to his mouth, which had become tiny. A thin lock of hair could be seen on the upper part of the bubble. That was all that remained of Ilyas’s thick jet-black hair.

I was drawn to look at Ilyas, but as I did, I wanted to avert my eyes, and when I averted my eyes, I could picture Ilyas’s former face very clearly.

I remembered well a day when that face seemed especially nice, handsome and kind to me. On that day, two years before Ilyas’s death, the preparations for a ceremony were almost complete in the school cafeteria, which also served as an assembly and concert hall. We first graders were to join the Octobrists, and the third graders, the Young Pioneers. All the tables and chairs were piled on top of one another in a corner, which made the cafeteria look bigger. It seemed as if its walls had expanded. Sunlight poured through the windows and was reflected in the floor, polished to perfection.

The class on duty, 3A, was responsible for the ceremony. The third graders, wearing red armbands, ran around the hall, their faces concerned, carrying ladders, sticking posters on the wall, inflating balloons, helping set up microphones on the stage.

And they were all mumbling something. We could hear… “I give my solemn oath…to fulfill all the rules and customs…” Today they, the third graders, would have red ties tied around their necks.

But first, it was our turn.

All of us future Octobrists had been brought to the hall and directed to form three circles, one inside the other. The third graders stood inside the circles. The principal was saying something on the stage, but I was so nervous that I couldn’t understand what it was until I heard, “Future Young Pioneers, pass your batons to your young comrades!” And then, the third graders ran to us. I was so excited that it seemed to me they were not running but floating slowly and smoothly on a cloud. Someone floated to Zhenya Andreyev, who stood to my left. Someone approached Galya Bektashova, who was on my right. They were saying something, their hands flashing. Everything was happening in a fog; my heart was pounding, fear mixed with my excitement. Why hadn’t anyone run up to me? Maybe they had forgotten about me.

At that moment, a figure floated in my direction. Ilyas Ilyasov stopped in front of me. He undid his Octobrist star slowly, pinned it to my blue shirt and patted me on the shoulder.

“Congratulations, Valery! Now it’s yours. You’ve become an Octobrist.”

A smile lit his face as he turned around and began to walk away. It seemed as if he were floating, just the way he had approached me.

I saw his olive-skinned face with its broad smile and white teeth as I sat in Ilyas’s bedroom. And I didn’t want to think about what had happened to that face; I couldn’t.

Other people arrived to say farewell to our friend, and we left the bedroom. We sat on the bench near the entrance; we just sat there silently, swinging our feet. We didn’t feel like talking.

“The funeral will be tomorrow,” Rustem informed us. We knew that the funeral would be the next day.

What if this funeral were with music, like Uncle Anatoly’s.

“Uncle Anatoly,” I said pensively. We hadn’t used his nickname Bogeyman since he died.

“Is there justice in this world?” Vova Oparin echoed. “There’s no justice.”

We wordlessly agreed with him.

Even though there were many people at the entrance on the day of the funeral, it was very quiet. People talked in whispers, no one lamented. Ilyas’s mother didn’t wail and cry. Her face remains etched in my memory. It was absolutely motionless, as if it weren’t alive. Her eyes were sunken with black circles around them. People supported her on both sides, but she could still hardly walk. A stretcher was brought out. Our poor friend, wrapped in a dark cloth, lay on it. And all that was in silence, without music, crying or lamenting. It seemed strange that, with so many people around, it was so quiet.

Just as at Uncle Anatoly’s funeral, the procession moved toward the main street, though there was no coffin, just a stretcher, and a strange silence hung in the air. It was still silent when it reached the place where a van awaited. There were no musicians with instruments waiting for Ilyas.

It was a nice autumn day, still, quiet and clear. There were no dust devils swirling through the streets as so often happened at this time of year. It seemed that even the weather knew that it needed to play its role in sending Ilyas off on his last journey, in accordance with Tatar customs.